Nicholas Kristof on the missing girls of Asia

NYT columnist Nicholas Kristof during a recent appearance on Fareed Zacharia's show:

Between 50 and 110 million females are missing around the globe. This is an astonishing figure. It means that in any one decade more girls are discriminated against to death around the world than all the people who died in all the genocides of the 20th century, which is a, you know, it's a staggering scope.

All of these girls were killed by sex-selective abortions and infanticide.

The enormity of death and suffering caused by population control is difficult to comprehend. Kristof makes the point: it exceeds all other genocide in the 20th century by an order of magnitude. And that is only the girls. Tens (perhaps hundreds) of millions of children-- boys and girls-- have died from infanticide and abortions.

Yet it is merely one part of the culture of death- euthanasia, abortion, contraception, capital punishment, aggressive war, terrorism, sterilization, destruction of human embryos for research, murder-- that derives from the denial of the full humanity of each human being.

Each human being is created in God's image. We are not just animals. We are spiritual as well as corporeal beings, and we each have a transcendent dignity.

First and foremost, we each have the right to life, from conception to natural death.

The horror of the 20th century femicide-- a genocide that along with abortion dwarfs all others in number of innocents killed-- is just the beginning of the evil that man will inflict on man if we continue to deny human dignity.

We are killing millions of children on the altar of false prosperity and 'sustainability'. We have returned to child sacrifice. The re-paganization of civilization continues apace.

After Newtown, where were the Humanists?

From the New York Times:

In a Crisis, Humanists Seem Absent

The funerals and burials over the past two weeks have taken place in Catholic, Congregational, Mormon and United Methodist houses of worship, among others. They have been held in Protestant megachurches and in a Jewish cemetery. A black Christian youth group traveled from Alabama to perform “Amazing Grace” at several of the services. 

This illustration of religious belief in action, of faith expressed in extremis, an example at once so heart-rending and so affirming, has left behind one prickly question: Where were the humanists? At a time when the percentage of Americans without religious affiliation is growing rapidly, why did the “nones,” as they are colloquially known, seem so absent? 

To raise these queries is not to play gotcha, or to be judgmental in a dire time. In fact, some leaders within the humanist movement — an umbrella term for those who call themselves atheists, agnostics, secularists and freethinkers, among other terms — are ruefully and self-critically saying the same thing themselves.

It's interesting to note that whenever public tragedies happen, Humanism takes a rain check. Humanists will moan that they have not been sufficiently organized, or funded, or oriented to grief counseling, etc.

Yet perhaps Humanists have reasons to be silent. What would Humanists say about kids and teachers in Newtown praying in their last moments? Were the last acts of the innocents in Sandy Hook Elementary School unconstitutional?

Humanists would never point out this necessary corollary of their creed, of course. Humanism publicly affirms gauzy creeds: human rights for all, non-violence, incessant benevolence, all of it.

Yet Humanists hold to a Darwinist understanding of human origins. If you believe that the deaths of other people's children give your offspring a leg up in life, you might find that grief counseling does not come naturally.

Humanist beliefs make moral responsibility difficult to ground. If there is no God, then there is no objective morality-- no real good or evil-- only moral opinions of individual men. If there is no afterlife, there is no ultimate accountability for good or evil.  All men are destined for annihilation. Good and evil, like man, are dust.

Humanist morality devolves to the opinions of individual men, and without God there is naught but opinion to separate the cacophony of human purposes. The only Humanist purpose for a man's life is the purpose he gives it.

Humanism wasn't absent in Newtown. It wore a utility vest, on a nihilistic binge of self-fulfillment. 

A liberal case for the Second Amendment

Good video from Hot Air.



Whitney points out that gun control merely criminalizes otherwise law-abiding citizens, and he alludes to the fact that gun control has been used to disarm blacks and even Catholics (in Revolutionary days).

Strict gun control is ineffective, stupid, and unconstitutional, and a few intelligent liberals (!) understand that it hurts liberals politically.

As it should. 

The British and Australian gun control experience

Joyce Lee Malcolm at the Wall Street Journal has a fine essay on the futility of gun-control even in Britain and Australia, which are cited as examples of "effective" gun control.

Excerpt:

[In England] the Firearms Act of 1998... instituted a nearly complete ban on handguns. Owners of pistols were required to turn them in. The penalty for illegal possession of a pistol is up to 10 years in prison. 

The results have not been what proponents of the act wanted. Within a decade of the handgun ban and the confiscation of handguns from registered owners, crime with handguns had doubled according to British government crime reports. Gun crime, not a serious problem in the past, now is. Armed street gangs have some British police carrying guns for the first time. Moreover, another massacre occurred in June 2010. Derrick Bird, a taxi driver in Cumbria, shot his brother and a colleague then drove off through rural villages killing 12 people and injuring 11 more before killing himself. 

Meanwhile, law-abiding citizens who have come into the possession of a firearm, even accidentally, have been harshly treated. In 2009 a former soldier, Paul Clarke, found a bag in his garden containing a shotgun. He brought it to the police station and was immediately handcuffed and charged with possession of the gun. At his trial the judge noted: "In law there is no dispute that Mr. Clarke has no defence to this charge. The intention of anybody possessing a firearm is irrelevant." Mr. Clarke was sentenced to five years in prison. A public outcry eventually won his release.

Gun control simply doesn't work. It criminalizes large numbers of law-abiding non-violent citizens, and fails to prevent gun crime. There are researchers who have found that gun control actually increases gun crime, by providing criminals with disarmed victims. Our tragic experience with "gun free zones" in schools certainly bears this out.

One would think that after Prohibition (of alcohol) failed so utterly, that we would understand that Prohibition (of guns) fails as well.

The only thing that gun control does accomplish effectively is that it makes the irrationality of liberal ideology remarkably clear. 

'Dear Washington, D.C. Police Chief: please... please... '

'... please arrest David Gregory for illegal possession of a high-capacity magazine. Please...'

Now, of course, normally I'm not the vindictive type (e.g. note the commentors I haven't banned), but there are situations in which the irony, the karma, is so intense that I have to beg for an arrest. Handcuffs, perp walk, rounding up the malefactor's associates (NBC producers, directors, etc).

Please bust these guys. For violation of gun control laws.

After all, the law is unambiguous:

DC High Capacity Ammunition Magazines – D.C. Official Code 7-2506.01
(b) No person in the District shall possess, sell, or transfer any large capacity ammunition feeding device regardless of whether the device is attached to a firearm. For the purposes of this subsection, the term large capacity ammunition feeding device means a magazine, belt, drum, feed strip, or similar device that has a capacity of, or that can be readily restored or converted to accept, more than 10 rounds of ammunition. The term large capacity ammunition feeding device shall not include an attached tubular device designed to accept, and capable of operating only with, .22 caliber rimfire ammunition...

Penalties:

It is also illegal to possess, sell or transfer any “large capacity ammunition feeding device.” A person guilty of this charge can be sentenced to a maximum fine of $1000 and/or up to a year imprisonment. D.C. Criminal Code 7-2506.01.

A year in prison...

It's too delicious. Please take a moment to understand the irony here. Supercilious elite media liberal David Gregory demands that ordinary citizens be prosecuted even more stringently for failing to obey ever more stringent gun control legislation. If you flashed this 30-round magazine in Washington D.C., your non-elite a** would be heading for the slammer. It wouldn't matter that the vast majority (99.9999%) of owners of high-capacity magazines never harm anyone, have the best of motives (protecting their loved ones, sport shooting, collectors, etc), are not criminals in any meaningful sense of the word. Gun-phobic elites want to criminalize you for possessing this magazine.

So the excuses that Gregory would offer to the arresting officer-- "I meant no harm, I was acting with the best of intentions, why don't you go after the real criminals,..." are exactly what you would say to the arresting officer if you, like Gregory, possessed a 30-round magazine.

The elites want you criminalized. They want you in jail if you possess it. But of course preening liberals like Gregory exempt themselves from the laws they intend for the lumpenproletariat

To the Washington D.C. chief of police: hoist Gregory on his own blow-dried petard. Give him what he and his a**hole liberal chums want to do to the rest of us.

Please... please...

The Journalists' Guide to Firearms Identification

HT: Ace of Spades HQ

Security for David Gregory's kids. For yours, not so much...

David Gregory on Meet the Press takes the NRA's Wayne LaPierre to task for proposing armed security for schoolchildren:

David Gregory mocked the NRA's Wayne LaPierre for proposing that armed guards be at every school in America...

"You proposed armed guards in school. We'll talk about that in some detail in a moment. You confronted the news media. You blamed Hollywood and the gaming industry. But never once did you concede that guns could actually be part of the problem. Is that a meaningful contribution, Mr. LaPierre, or a dodge?," asked Gregory. 

Later the host suggested that guns don't prevent violence in schools (he cited the mass shootings at Columbine and Virginia Tech). "But you would concede that, as good as an idea as you think this is, it may not work. Because there have been cases where armed guards have not prevented this kind of massacre, this kind of carnage. I want you would concede that point, wouldn't you?," Gregory pleaded. 

The NBC host would go on the rest of the segment to suggest that armed guards might not be effective in preventing mass murders at school...

Gregory himself sends his kids to Sidwell Friends, an elite private school in Washington, D.C..

Children at Sidwell Friends are protected by security that includes eleven security officers, including at least several (presumably armed) police officers, and by a bevy of assault-weapon-armed Secret Service officers, who protect the school (President Obama's daughters are the Gregory kids' classmates).

Armed school security is for the children of the gun-control elite. For your kids who are going to school in gun-free zones, well... the elites do promise to make morally-preening futile gestures, and to attend the funerals. 

Penn Jillette is pretty smart, for an atheist

Penn Jillette schools three astonishingly clueless liberals about the Newtown murders.



Jillette is right about practically everything in this video.

I should add two things about the libs inane arguments:

1) The woman on the far right at the table said early in the interview that  (paraphrasing because it's so stupid that I can't bear to listen to it again) 'we should outlaw all semi-automatic rifles, because they can be made into machine guns, and if the killer had only pistols, he would have been able to kill only about two people'.

:-/

Reply:

a) There are at least a 100 million semi-automatic rifles in the U.S. They are the least common weapon used in crimes (c/w pistols, knives, baseball bats, fists, sawed-off shotguns, etc). Outlawing them would make 100 million Americans into felons if they didn't turn them in, and many millions of Americans wouldn't. So cops would have to go door to door to disarm millions of passionate gun owners who are now declared felons  and who (rightly) understand that they have a constitutional right to own the gun. What a great policy idea to reduce gun violence.

b) Semi-automatic weapons are almost never made into automatic weapons. It requires special skills and parts and equipment that are generally unavailable. Anyone who wants an automatic weapon would do better simply to buy one on the black market, which is easy.

c) Pistols are highly effective weapons for mass killings. The biggest mass shooting in US history was the murder of 32 people at Virginia Tech. It was done by a killer with two pistols.

2) The idiot woman in the center compared the US gun homicide rate to that of Switzerland. Switzerland has a very low gun homicide rate, it is true. And Switzerland requires every adult male to have a fully automatic military assault rifle in his home (all Swiss men are military reservists). Switzerland is in the top 10% of gun ownership in the world, and nearly all of the guns are fully automatic assault rifles, and its gun crime rate is very low. QED.

So the Liberal Democrats sitting around the table with Jillette are utterly wrong about many basic facts about gun ownership and gun violence in the US.

Here's a fact:

Virtually all of the gun violence in the United States is perpetrated by... (you know the answer...) Democrats.

Democrats shoot Democrats in municipalities governed by Democrats.

Maybe if people like the uninformed morally posturing pinheads at the table with Jillette stopped voting for Democrats, we'd have better laws better enforced and much less violence. When New York City was run by a Republican (1994-2001) gun violence dropped by 80%. The precipitous drop in gun violence was caused by better governance, not gun control.

We don't need gun control. We need Democrat control.

Liberal Logic

From Liberal Logic

"... certainly good news environmentally..."

From Berkley Law's Legal Planet:

Whatever else it might portend, [John] Kerry’s appointment as Secretary of State is certainly good news environmentally. The New Republic put it well: 

Kerry, long an advocate for the U.S. to lead on climate change prevention, has compared the threat posed by poor international effort to confront climate change to that of war. In an August speech on the Senate floor, he said, “We all know what’s happening with respect to Iran, and nuclear weapons and the possibility even of a war. … This issue actually is of as significant a level of importance, because it affects life itself on the planet. Because it affects ecosystems on which the oceans and the land depend.” As National Journal’s Coral Davenport points out, “He was the only U.S. senator to attend key UN climate-change negotiations in Bali, Indonesia, in 2007, and Poznan, Poland, in 2008.” 

Kerry’s commitment to the environment runs deep. Along with Theresa Kerry, he authored a book a few years ago called “This Moment on Earth,” which builds on stories about local activists to discuss broader issues of policy. As the book shows, Kerry’s concerns are by no means limited to climate change: 

The planet is in crisis. [W]e live in a world so infused with toxins that they have made their way into the soil, the air and water, and our bodies from conception to the end of life. This stark reality was bluntly confirmed in March 2005 with the release of the UN’s Global Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. . . It was the most comprehensive look at the health of the world’s oceans, land, forests, species, and atmosphere to date, and its conclusion was bleak — Many of the world’s ecosystems are headed for collapse unless radical measures are implemented to revive them. 

According to the report, over the past 50 years, human actions have depleted the Earth’s natural resources on an unprecedented scale to satisfy growing demands for food, fresh water, timber, fiber, and fuel. The report’s authors warned about the calamitous state of many of the world’s fish stocks, the intense vulnerability of the 2 billion people living in dry regions to the loss of ecosystem services including water supply, and the growing threat to ecosystems from climate change and nutrient pollution. [p. 7] 

In Kerry’s State Department, environmental concerns are likely to have high priority, including but not limited to climate change. Good news indeed.

                                                                         
Eco-warrior Kerry is well-equipped to wage war on climate change. The billionaire (by marriage) Senator has a navy (his 7 million dollar 76 foot yacht), an air force (his private jet named "The Flying Squirrel" after his favorite ski trail), armored calvary (he rides in SUV's), and well defended land bases (he has five private luxury homes.)

Your selfish "demands for food, fresh water, timber, fiber, and fuel" are endangering the planet, and you must cede power to Senator Kerry and his colleagues, who will tax the gas you exhale.

Just as it should be. You aren't a denier, are you?

And Love became flesh,and dwelt among us.

The Very Reverend Pedro Arrupe, Superior General of the Jesuits::

“Nothing is more practical than finding God, that is, than falling in a love in a quite absolute, final way. What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination will affect everything. It will decide what will get you out of bed in the mornings, what you will do with your evenings, how you spend your weekends, what you read, who you know, what breaks your heart, and what amazes you with joy and gratitude. Fall in love, stay in love, and it will decide everything.”

God came as one of us. His Incarnation began as each of us enters the world, in pain and awe and peril. The Creator entered His creation to redeem it-- to redeem us-- by acquaintance with Him, by sharing his Love with each other, and at the end of His life on earth by his astonishing act of love on the Cross.

On this Holy Day, in Bethlehem 2000 years ago, Love became flesh and dwelt among us.

Merry Christmas! 

Isaiah 11

A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse;
from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.
The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him—
the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding,
the Spirit of counsel and of might,
the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the Lord—
and he will delight in the fear of the Lord.

He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes,
or decide by what he hears with his ears;
but with righteousness he will judge the needy,
with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth. 

He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth;
with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked.
Righteousness will be his belt
and faithfulness the sash around his waist.

The wolf will live with the lamb,
the leopard will lie down with the goat,
the calf and the lion and the yearling together;
and a little child will lead them.

1:33:28 of pure wisdom

For this Christmas Eve morning, this is a must-watch video of Ed Feser's talk last year at the Faith and Reason conference at Gonzaga University. Ed explains the Aristotelian/Thomist teleological approach to science.

Listen carefully, and take notes.

For my materialist and atheist friends, this will be on the Final Exam. You'll get extra credit if you try to understand what he's saying, and if you can resist the itch to chant "pathological liar". 

For my theist friends, please watch the whole thing. Pour a cup of coffee or eggnog and enjoy an hour and a half of beautifully explained truth.

If you like a little red meat, Feser takes on the New Atheists at about 1:17:00. A demolition job. You almost feel sorry for them. But not really. 

Let's start enforcing gun control right now...

From The Patriot Perspective

David Gregory, broadcasting from Washington, D.C.
holding a 30-round capacity AR15 ammunition magazine.

DC High Capacity Ammunition Magazines – D.C. Official Code 7-2506.01
(b) No person in the District shall possess, sell, or transfer any large capacity ammunition feeding device regardless of whether the device is attached to a firearm. For the purposes of this subsection, the term large capacity ammunition feeding device means a magazine, belt, drum, feed strip, or similar device that has a capacity of, or that can be readily restored or converted to accept, more than 10 rounds of ammunition. The term large capacity ammunition feeding device shall not include an attached tubular device designed to accept, and capable of operating only with, .22 caliber rimfire ammunition...

Penalties:

It is also illegal to possess, sell or transfer any “large capacity ammunition feeding device.” A person guilty of this charge can be sentenced to a maximum fine of $1000 and/or up to a year imprisonment. D.C. Criminal Code 7-2506.01.

Wouldn't it be delicious if the ATF showed up at NBC headquarters in Washington, demanding the surrender of all of the suspects in the "magazine possession" case? I mean, these offenders violated gun control laws on national T.V.

Nah. Neva' happen. I'm sure Gregory's personal security, as well as the heavily armed security guarding the entrance to the NBC studio, have lots of high capacity magazines.

 Gun control laws are for the little people, not the elites. 

"Guns make us less safe"

:-/

"When your children grow up, they will be loathe to admit that their father is ..."

Commentor Hoo:

"When your children grow up, they will be loathe to admit that their father is a silly crank who rails against science. That is too bad."

I've actually thought about that a lot.

My activism began about a decade ago when I read Edwin Black's "War Against the Weak", a history of eugenics. I was shocked and angered, and felt a deep shame that the medical profession played a role in something like eugenics.

I wondered: what would I have done? Eugenics was mainstream from 1900 through the 1930's. All of the best medical schools endorsed it, and many taught courses in it. It was "scientific". People in the profession who opposed it (and there weren't many) were labeled with the equivalent of "deniers" that we have today.

I hoped that I would have had the insight and courage to oppose eugenics, and to protect my patients from it. My patients after all are prime eugenic targets-- neurologically handicapped kids.

I have come to understand that eugenics is not over. If anything, it is more pervasive, albeit insidious, than it was in the early 20th century. Now-a-days eugenics is 'cleaner'. We search out and abort handicapped babies. Now some countries are killing handicapped children at birth.

And I've come to see that this horrendously anti-human crusade has other forms-- overpopulation fanaticism, anti-pesticide lunacy, global warming hysteria. It's the same people really-- quite literally, the membership of the eugenic organizations of the 1950's simply shifted over to the population control organizations of the 1960's. The same malevolent loons wage war on DDT and demand control of the world's energy. Same junk science. Same inhumanity. Same arrogance. Same malevolence.

So when my kids grow up (three of our four are already in college, grad school and working), I want them to know exactly what I did. I rail against eugenics, population control, anti-pesticide fanaticism, and global warming hysteria.

I want my kids to know that I stood against it.

Study: guess who caused the subprime mortgage crisis?

New Study Finds Democrats Fully to Blame for Subprime Mortgage Crisis that Caused 2008 Financial Disaster

ACORN lawyer (left) and leftie priest-activist Michael Pflager demand
 subprime mortgages for low-income borrowers.

Leftie goons demanded that banks issue loans to people who couldn't afford them, and used government agencies (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) run by Democrats to cover the risk, until it all collapsed. The ensuing economic meltdown got one of the leftie goons who caused the collapse elected president.

Cloward-Piven. Ya' gotta admire it.  

Merry Christmas from the US ambassador to Finland

This is not a spoof.

This is the Christmas card from US Ambassador to Finland Bruce Oreck, posted on his Facebook page and sent to friends.

:-/

An atheist's prayer for churches

In this Advent season, Simon Jenkins, who is an atheist, reflects on the role of churches in English life.

This month, the census appeared to confirm a Religious Trends reportthat church attendance was falling so fast that by 2035 there would be more active Muslims than Christians in Britain, and by 2050 as many Hindus. On any showing this is a seismic moment in English history. (I leave Welsh, Scottish and Irish to them.) Will Prince William be crowned in a mosque? Has Saladin had the last laugh? Is Richard the Lionheart turning in his grave? 

As an atheist I may be careless of the Anglican church and listen to doctrinal feuds over female bishops and gay marriages with bafflement. But I am intensely careful of churches, and not just churches as buildings, glorious as many of them are. Those who deride the church should recognise them also as institutions of local art, ancestry, history and ceremony. Why else have cathedral attendances risen by a quarter in the past decade? Why do all churches surge at Christmas? 

It is simply inconceivable that England's 47,000 parish churches will disappear, even with the decline in religion. But to enjoy a church involves willing its upkeep. I believe that a building designed for a purpose, however eccentric, is ideally best used for that purpose. I would think the same of a theatre, a town hall or a freemason's lodge. 

An English church is designed for a specific liturgy, in the case of 10,000 medieval parish churches ironically a Roman Catholic one. The layout of chancel, choir, transepts and aisles makes full sense only with the murmur of the mass, the smell of incense, the busying of priests about the altar. As attendances plummet, must church-lovers recruit from central casting to fill this void, as one day actors will be needed to "change the guard" for London tourists? 

I readily put my pound into the collection box to keep these places open and alive. I will them to flourish. I was sorry when Norwich closed two-thirds of its medieval churches as no longer fit for purpose. York struggled, and largely succeeded, in keeping similar numbers of churches open at least as public spaces. 

In his new history of Anglicanism, Our Church, the philosopher Roger Scruton praises its tolerance, its pragmatism, its "genius for compromise" (at least until today). It has permeated English culture in language, architecture, music, poetry. Through establishment it has decorated the trappings of state. 

Scruton clearly finds all this a supreme comfort, which is a matter for him. But in an important respect even he sells the Church of England short. It may in the past have been an agent of reaction, notably the bishops in parliament, and its constitutional status may be unsustainable. In local schooling it remains divisive. But when government is bleeding civic purpose from every community in the land, the church and its clergy are one of the last human threads binding villages, towns and inner city communities together. 

I have visited estates outside Sheffield, Manchester and east London from which doctors, teachers, policemen, social workers, professionals of all sorts, have fled, or at least confined themselves to cars. The only "leader" left in residence is the priest, of whatever denomination, underpaid, working in appalling surroundings and motivated by a grim but sincere philanthropy. The nearest I have found to saints have been priests in tough areas. And most are desperately alone. When a river floods, a child vanishes or a murder is committed, the only person the media can find to comment is usually a priest. He or she is the closest England gets to a mayor. 

Local England has reverted to the middle ages, with the clergy as its most public face. The clergy are the ones who tend to know who is in trouble, who is a villain, who a saint. Their workplace is a church. They apparently mobilise 1.6 million parish volunteers for what amounts to social work, from caring for the elderly to hospital visiting. This output must be worth billions to the state. And all the state does in return is impose VAT and health and safety regulations on church repairs. 

Finding new uses for old churches is a national pastime, and a worthwhile one. They are doubling as assembly halls, post offices, cafes, bookshops, scout halls and "pop-up" everythings. More people must visit churches – notably the booming cathedrals – in the cause of art than of religion. They flock to concerts and literary festivals. They deck them with flowers for their ceremonies and, most impressively, support their roofs. Very few Anglican churches are in a really bad state of repair. Compare that with the degenerating village halls, institutes, cinemas, libraries and swimming pools that secularists supposed would supersede churches – and which foolishly depend on the government for funds. 

So I may not believe in the church, but at Christmas I gladly salute its presence and its role in society.

Jenkins admirably pays homage to the central role churches and clergy and the faithful play in civic life. The heart of a nation is its civic life-- not the issuance of government regulations or the imposition of taxes and fees, but the voluntary association of individuals and families for the common good. The civic good done by Christianity through its churches and clergy and faithful is immeasurable. Even in the hedonist secular West, Christianity-- remembered or lived-- remains the fabric of the public good.

What Mr. Jenkins fails to consider is that the deep good that Christianity brings to life-- to family life, to private life, to civic life-- is not accidental. There is a reason that Christianity is so effective at bonding us together, at comforting and challenging and blessing us, at making our lives rich and full of grace.

The good that natural science does is because it is the truth about nature. The good that Christianity does is because it is the truth about us. 

"We do not really want a religion that is right where we are right. What we want is a religion that is right where we are wrong."

Chesterton explains one of the chiefest reasons I became a Catholic, even though I did not originally agree with several aspects of Church teaching (e.g. on contraception, prohibition of homosexual acts, opposition to capital punishment, abortion for fetal deformity, among others).

I wanted to learn, not to teach. I listened carefully, and tried to understand, and I fell in love with the wisdom of the Church.

Chesterton as usual gets it right.

We do not really want a religion that is right where we are right. What we want is a religion that is right where we are wrong. In these current fashions it is not really a question of the religion allowing us liberty; but (at the best) of the liberty of allowing us a religion. These people merely take the modern mood, with much in it that is amiable and much that is anarchical and much that is merely dull and obvious, and then require any creed to be cut down to fit that mood. But the mood would exist even without the creed. They say they want a religion to be practical, when they would be practical without any religion. They say they want a religion acceptable to science, when they would accept the science even if they did not accept the religion. They say they want a religion like this because they are like this already. They say they want it, when they mean that they could do without it.” 

—G.K. Chesterton

HT: Anchoress 

'Global warming may make the earth explode'

'Nuclear' explode, that is:

No second chance? Can Earth explode as a result of Global Warming?
Dr Tom J. Chalko 1 , MSc, PhD
Submitted on 8 April 2001, revised 30 October 2004. Published in NU Journal of Discovery ISSN 1444 1454 Publisher: Natural University

Abstract: The heat generated inside our planet is predominantly of radionic (nuclear) origin. Hence, Earth in its entirety can be considered a slow nuclear reactor with its solid ”inner core” providing a major contribution to the total energy output. Since radionic heat is generated in the entire volume and cooling can only occur at the surface, the highest temperature inside Earth occurs at the center of the inner core. Overheating the center of the inner core reactor due to the so-called greenhouse effect on the surface of Earth may cause a meltdown condition, an enrichment of nuclear fuel and a gigantic atomic explosion.Paper here: http://nujournal.net/core.pdf

I'm sure the statistics prove it.

Global warming science never rests.  

HT:Watts Up With That

Dr. Hoo issues a challenge. Oops.

Climate-scientist wannabe Hoo issues a challenge:

Dr. Egnor,

I have asked you several times to state whether you agree with Judith Curry's assessment:

"Has there been any warming since 1997 (Jonathan Leake’s question)? There has been slight warming during the past 15 years."

Do you agree with it?

Hoo

Let's take a look at the link for Curry's statement.

The date of Curry's post quoted by Hoo is February 7, 2012.

During the week of October 6-13, 2012, the Met Office (a climate science center) released updated data. Journalist David Rose of the U.K. Daily Mail pointed out that the data showed no significant warming:













Dana Nuticelli, a warmist climate scientist, took issue with the Daily Mail's report on the data in an article on October 13, 2012.


On October 16, 2012, Dr. Curry, in reply to Nuticelli's article, posted:

[Judith Curry's] note to defenders of the idea that the planet has been warming for the past 16 years 

"Raise the level of your game. Nothing in the Met Office's statement or in Nuticelli's argument effectively refutes Rose's argument that there has been no increase in the global average surface temperature for the past 16 years. 

Use this as an opportunity to communicate honestly with the public about what we know and what we don't know about climate change. Take a lesson from these other scientists that acknowledge the 'pause', mentioned in my previous post Candid comments from global warming scientists"

In addition, Dr. Curry responds to the argument that a "statistical analysis" of the data shows warming:

"how does this refute [the no-warming] argument? No statistically significant positive trend, and it makes it look like SkS [the warmist website that put up the calculator] hasn’t done their homework with the latest data."

So Hoo quoted Curry's February 7, 2012 post about earlier data, which is not the data we are discussing.

Curry's viewpoint on the data we are discussing (in the graph above) is stated in my quote from her dated October 16, 2012.

Dr. Curry agrees that the graph above shows "no statistically significant positive trend".


Hoo can't get dates right. He was referring to Curry's earlier opinion about a different data set.

Or perhaps Hoo, statistical maven, knew exactly what he was doing, and he was hoping you wouldn't notice.

American freed after being jailed in gun control paradise

I'm not sure if you've been following this story, but Marine veteran Jon Hammar Jr. has been freed from  a drug-lord-controlled prison and is back on U.S. soil. Hammar was jailed on batshit gun charges in Mexico, which has probably the strictest gun control in the world, and corresponding rates of gun crime.

Prayers were answered for Mr. Hammar and his family. May they have a blessed Christmas. 

The best essay on gun control. Ever.

An opinion on gun control.

Paragraph after paragraph of high-density truth. The guy knows what he's talking about.

Please read the whole thing. And then read it again. 

The latest from "Trend Central"

This is fun. Commentor Hoo is diligently calculating to show that the graph of world temperature over the past 16 years (above) shows a warming "trend".

Hoo:

And with that, I will repost the numbers for the temperature trend obtained from HadCRUT4 from various starting dates until today: 

1995–2012: +0.109±0.119 °C/decade
1996–2012: +0.107±0.131 °C/decade
1997–2012: +0.058±0.136 °C/decade
1998–2012: +0.052±0.153 °C/decade
1999–2012: +0.095±0.162 °C/decade
2000–2012: +0.056±0.179 °C/decade

We are talking about the time dependence of the average global temperature anomaly ΔT as a function of time t. Specifically, ΔT(t) = ΔT(t0) + β(t−t0). Here t0 is a starting point in time and β is the linear slope. 

... the HadCRUT4 data set (among others) yields a positive β even if you cherry-pick the starting point? The values of β for various starting points are quoted in my previous comment.

Hoo's evidence for global warming in that graph:

"ΔT(t) = ΔT(t0) + β(t−t0)".

:-/


Global warming science in real time, as it happens.

"Use [the lack of warming] as an opportunity to communicate honestly with the public..."

Commentor Hoo persists in claiming that his "statistical" analysis proves that this graph of the past 16 years of earth's temperature shows... warming:

Graph of global temperatures for the past 16 years
that demonstrates "warming", according to warmists. 

Here's what actual climate scientists say about the obvious lack of global warming for the past 16 years.

Dr. Judith Curry, chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric sciences at Georgia Institute of Technology, and one of America's pre-eminent climate scientists:

[Judith Curry's] note to defenders of the idea that the planet has been warming for the past 16 years 

"Raise the level of your game. Nothing in the Met Office's statement or in Nuticelli's argument effectively refutes Rose's argument that there has been no increase in the global average surface temperature for the past 16 years. 

Use this as an opportunity to communicate honestly with the public about what we know and what we don't know about climate change. Take a lesson from these other scientists that acknowledge the 'pause', mentioned in my previous post Candid comments from global warming scientists"

In addition, Dr. Curry responds to the argument that a "statistical analysis" of the data shows warming:

"how does this refute [the no-warming] argument? No statistically significant positive trend, and it makes it look like SkS [the warmist website that put up the calculator] hasn’t done their homework with the latest data."

Here's Dr. Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at the USA National Center for Atmospheric Research:

"The hiatus [in warming] was not unexpected. Variability in the climate can suppress rising temperatures temporarily, though before this decade scientists were uncertain how long such pauses could last. In any case, one decade is not long enough to say anything about human effects on climate; as one forthcoming paper lays out, 17 years is required"

Curry is fairly skeptical of global warming alarmism, and Trenberth is one of the Climategate crooks.

When the leading skeptics and the leading crooks agree that there's been no global warming for 16 years, and you have a graph of the data that obviously shows no warming, who are ya' gonna believe, warmists' "statistics" or you're lyin' eyes?

One apocalyptic hoax down, one to go...

If you're reading this, the world didn't end. Sorry Mayans.

Let's redouble our efforts to debunk the next apocalyptic hoax in the queue.

What is the gun community going to do about this tragedy?

"I dunno. What is the gay community going to do about Penn State?"



Interesting parallel. Sport shooting/gay sex.

Each is legal, done daily by millions of ordinary people, and each was expropriated by a psychopath to do unspeakable things to children.

Two differences:

1) Sport shooting isn't anywhere near as lethal as gay sex.

2) Media/politicians always link sport shooting, but never gay sex, to atrocities.

The most important tool in global warming research is...

Commentor Hoo and I have been going back and forth about the observation made by the Met Office in England (a climate science center) that there really hasn't been any global warming over the past 16 years, despite large increases in atmospheric CO2.

Hoo says there has been substantial warming, almost certainly:

No, it did not stop warming. If you followed troy's link and played with the data yourself (or merely looked up the results elsewhere) then you would know that over the last 16 years the global temperature anomaly increased by 0.13 degrees plus or minus 0.13 degrees (Celsius) per decade.

What does this result mean? Statistically speaking (I know it is Greek for you), it means that the most likely value of the increase was 0.13 degrees per decade. The quoted uncertainty of 0.13 degrees per decade is two standard deviations. In plain English, the rise was between 0.065 and 0.195 degrees per decade with the probability of 68 percent, and between 0 and 0.26 degrees with the probability of 95 percent. The chance that the temperature did not increase or went down is 2.2 percent.

Let me repeat that. 2.2 percent chance that the temperature did not rise or went down.
97.8 percent chance that the temperature did rise.
68 percent chance that it rose between 0.065 and 0.195 degrees per decade.

If I were a betting man, I would not bet against global warming. If you do so then you are a fool.

2.2 percent chance that the temperature anomaly did not rise or went down.
97.8 percent chance that the temperature anomaly rose.
68 percent chance that it rose between 0.065 and 0.195 degrees per decade.

2.2 percent chance that the temperature anomaly did not rise or went down.
97.8 percent chance that the temperature anomaly rose.
68 percent chance that it rose between 0.065 and 0.195 degrees per decade.

I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009.This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods.
Let me unpack this for you. He is saying that the data he uses (HADCRUT) does not show a warming trend with a 95-percent confidence level, but only just so. He is not saying that there is no warming.

Go to the calculator page and select the data set he mentions: HADCRUT4 (put out jointly by the Met Office and Jones). Put the start date at 1995 and end date at 2009. Hit Calculate. You will see a rising trend with a warming of 0.140±0.164 °C/decade (2σ error bars). With a 95 percent confidence the temperature trend was between −0.02 and +0.30 degree per decade. It isn't much different from the trend seen in the GISTEMP data set I quoted earlier.

Furthermore, the line about the last 16 years is a significant distortion. It is statistically much more likely (50-to-1 odds) that global temperatures have been rising over the last 16 years than falling. The positive trend, reported by several different groups, is 1.2 degrees per century, in agreement with the rise in the last 100 years.

One more time, for those who are slow on the intake.

2.2 percent chance that the temperature anomaly did not rise or went down.
97.8 percent chance that the temperature anomaly rose.
68 percent chance that it rose between 0.065 and 0.195 degrees per decade.

Pretty impressive statistics, them.

So what does the data really look like, graphed out?

Here:

Mean global temperature 1997-2012, from Met Office, U.K. 

According to global warming mavens, it shows:

"It is statistically much more likely (50-to-1 odds) that global temperatures have been rising over the last 16 years than falling. The positive trend, reported by several different groups, is 1.2 degrees per century, in agreement with the rise in the last 100 years. [There is a] 97.8 percent chance that the temperature anomaly rose... You will see a rising trend with a warming of 0.140±0.164 °C/decade (2σ error bars). With a 95 percent confidence the temperature trend was between −0.02 and +0.30 degree per decade."

:-/


The most important tool in global warming research is a shovel.

Americans understand what happened in Newtown and how to stop it next time.

GALLUP: MORE AMERICANS FAVOR SCHOOL OFFICIALS HAVING GUNS THAN WEAPON BAN.

Only a small group of Americans-- liberals-- believe that more gun control (Connecticut already has very strict gun control) will prevent school massacres.

The American public understands that the "gun-free zone" at Sandy Hook Elementary School was a major factor in the slaughter of these children.

Diane Ravitich:

This much is clear: the teachers and staff at the Sandy Hook Elementary School reacted with astonishing courage to the unthinkable, the terrifying intrusion of a man intent on murdering them and their students. With no thought of their own safety, they defended their children.. 

Everyone of them is a hero, those who died and those who survived. 

Six of them died protecting the children. 

We don’t know the names of the survivors, but we know who made the ultimate sacrifice. For their courage and selflessness, they are heroes of American education. 

The principal, Dawn Hochsprung, 47, and the school psychologist, Mary Sherlach, 52, ran towards the intruder to try to stop him. They both were killed. 

The killer went in search of defenseless babies and teachers. The teachers heard the gunfire, tried to hide their children, hid them in closets and cabinets. 

Vicki Soto, 27, put herself between the killer and her children. He killed her. Somehow some of them escaped. Six ran to a nearby house. They told the surprised homeowner 

“We can’t go back to our school. Our teacher is dead. We don’t have a teacher.” 

Anne Marie Murphy, 52, was a special education teacher who was devoted to the children she taught. When her body was found, little Dylan Hockley was in her arms. 

Rachel D’Avino was a new teacher, who was getting her doctorate in special education. She was a behavioral analyst. Her boyfriend planned to ask her to marry him during the Christmas holiday. Like the other teachers, she died shielding students.

Americans understand that next time a teacher has to run down the hall toward gunshots, she should not be required by law to do it unarmed.  

Just a little question before we start...

We're gonna have a 'national conversation' on gun control. Thomas Crown at Red State lays out the groundwork for the discussion, and asks a question:

So, as [Lefties] begin their ritual descent into bathing in the blood of children about whom they wouldn’t care were they just inside the birth canal, let’s have the “conversation” about pretending away the Second Amendment they want. Because they want to change the law, the burden of proof lies on them; so here is the first question they must answer: 

Why didn’t restrictive gun control laws save the victims of Newtown?

This is what the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence has to say about Connectictut’s gun control regime:

Connecticut has strong gun laws that help combat the illegal gun market, prevent the sale of most guns without background checks and reduce risks to children, according to the Brady Campaign. In the organization’s 2009 state scorecards released for all 50 states, Connecticut earned 53 points out of a total of 100 and has the nation’s fourth strongest gun laws.
“Connecticut has done more than most states to combat illegal guns and has worked to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people. In fact, Connecticut has a one-of-a-kind law that allows a judge to remove guns from people who have been determined to be a threat to themselves or others,” said Ron Pinciaro, President of CT Against Gun Violence.

The Washington Post — no opponent of a disarmed citizenry — agrees with this characterization. Connecticut “has among the most stringent gun control laws on the books,” the Post notes, citing three disparate groups of experts, before allowing Connecticut’s chief Democrat to explain that his state can’t enforce its own laws without adult supervision. 

I don’t believe that we should be making domestic policy based on anecdote or on a single event. No system is properly tested in a single instance. The proof of a policy is how it performs over time — after hundreds or thousands of events. But gun control proponents do not agree. Piers Morgan, Michael Moore, Rupert Murdoch, and many more seem to believe that the vicious and evil killings in Connecticut prove the need for more stringent gun control measures. They race to change the law in the wake of tragedies because they know that they long ago lost the policy debate and that cooler heads will reject any such regulation absent the immediate aftermath of a tragedy.

A lesser-noted detail of America’s current demographics is that in the midst of an awful economic downturn, violent crime is falling. Americans recognize that gun crimes have continued to trend down as more law-abiding citizens have gotten access to firearms. So having failed to fool the people into signing onto their policies, they pretend that their ideas have been ignored — rather than considered and rejected again and again — and they call for a “national conversation,” a term of art the Obama Administration has embraced since the beginning that translates into American English as “agree with me, or I’ll regulate it anyway, democracy be damned, you idiots.” 

Defenders of the Bill of Rights ought to welcome that debate, one that we’ve been having for every year of the roughly four decades I’ve drawn breath on this planet. (We keep having it because the Left, like the Roman legions, refuses to admit defeat until they win.) After all, we can and will win one more time if the sense of the American people (also known to its opponents as “the gun lobby,” “the Israel lobby,” and so on) is allowed to prevail. But if we are to discuss the value of gun restrictions, we first need an explanation from gun control advocates of why their ideas failed the victims in Newtown.

As noted above, according to the Brady Campaign, Connecticut has the nation’s fourth-strongest gun laws. The sale and possession of so-called assault weapons are banned under state law. As noted above, the state empowers judges to remove guns from those who constitute a threat. The state earns high marks for gun dealer regulation, reporting of lost or stolen guns, background checks, permit to purchase, child safety, and earns the maximum score on guns in public places. 

So here’s the challenge for gun control advocates: explain why you failed the people of Newtown. You cited Connecticut as a national example. You said its laws “reduce risks to children.” You gave no state a higher rating for keeping guns out of public places — like schools.

And a criminally insane man stole legally-owned guns (owned under Connecticut’s regime) after being denied their legal purchase, broke in through a window, and killed children and adults — adults who were not armed to shoot back, and so died unable to save the children who also died. 

You want this one event to be a national test? Fine. Why are there 20 children dead when the state of Connecticut did what you said they should to keep their people safe? 

Once you answer that question, we can get this conversation underway. [emphasis mine]

We need to strip the bark off these gun-control morons. They created the primary condition necessary for the slaughter of these kids-- the school gun-free zone. They did the bidding of the shooter, in spades. He was assured by gun control advocates of facing no opposition at all for 20 minutes. Connecticut is a gun-control utopia. The citizens of Newtown followed the rules set down by the gun-control imbeciles. 

They got 26 dead kids and teachers for it. 

Gun-control posturing is lethal. Gun-free zones are lethal. Schools need armed protection. Schools need guns in the hands of the good guys. 

This needs to be an in-your-face debate. Gun-control a**holes have blood on their hands. Their policy--- carried out aggressively in Connecticut-- failed. They have no standing in this debate.  

Gun control advocates need to answer, not ask, questions. 

How are all of those Global Warming predictions doing?

Patrick Michaels has a great graph at Forbes, in which he compares the UN climate agency's predictions (colored swaths- FAR means "First Assessment Report", SAR "Second..., etc). Black with error bars is the observed temperatures.

No warming since 1996, despite substantial rise in atmospheric CO2 and hysterical predictions.

Let's move on the next hoax, guys. Eugenics, Overpopulation, Pesticide Hysteria, Global Cooling, Global Warming all splashed. How about acidification of the oceans?

Robert Bork on his conversion to Catholicism

Jurist and legal scholar Robert Bork, who passed away yesterday, gave this interview in 2003 about his conversion to Catholicism.

My conversion had similar themes, as well as personal experiences-- and one in particular-- in which the Lord made Himself quite real to me. He still does. My guess is that Bork has experiences as well, which perhaps he would be reluctant to discuss in an interview. I believe that the Lord draws us to him in a variety of ways-- through reason, through intuition, through emotions, through suffering and trial, through revelation, and through human relationships.

He's terribly persistent. 

Noe on the mind-body problem and the failure of materialist reductionism

Ed Feser quotes philosopher Alva Noe on the Achilles heel of materialist reductionism in science.

Noe:

The scientific revolution took its impulse from what the philosopher Bernard Williams called the Absolute Conception of Reality. This is a conception of the world as "it really is" entirely apart from how it appears to us: a colorless, odorless value-free domain of particles and complexes moving in accordance with timeless and immutable mathematical laws. The world so conceived has no place for mind in it. No intention. No purpose. If there is mind — and of course the great scientific revolutionaries such as Descartes and Newton would not deny that there is mind — it exists apart from and unconnected to the material world as this was conceived of by the New Science.

If modern science begins by shaping a conception of the cosmos, its subject matter, in such a way as to exclude mind and life, then it shouldn't come as a surprise that we can't seem to find a place for them in the natural order so conceived.

This is why Nagel observes, at the beginning of his book, that the mind-body problem isn't just a local problem concerning brains, behavior and the mind; correctly understood it invades our understanding of the cosmos itself and its history.

Materialist reductionism inherently excludes the mind and purpose from science. Coherent explanation of mental phenomenon becomes impossible, because the whole point of the materialist/reductionist enterprise is to decant nature to particles bumping in the void. Materialists even flounder with an explanation for the mathematics to which many natural processes adhere so effectively and so unreasonably. In a world composed entirely of bumping little billiard-balls, materialists are at a loss to explain the elegant mathematics to which the little balls hew.

There is a much better way of understanding the natural world. Aristotelianism posits that change in nature can only be fully understood by examination of four causes-- material, efficient, formal and final. For many practical applications, it's fine to focus on material and efficient causes, in the tradition of science since Newton. But a genuine understanding of nature must incorporate formal causation-- the intelligible aspects of things-- and final causation-- the directedness of change-- loosely speaking, its purpose.

Materialist reductionism, and it's banal application to biology, is a crude mistake. 

Precisely what kind of gun control would have stopped Lanza?

From Reason:

... Lanza took the two handguns and the rifle that he had with him on Friday from his mother, who acquired them legally (and who was his first victim), the relevance of lies by gun permit applicants escapes me. Furthermore, the rifle, a .223-caliber Bushmaster M4 carbine, was not covered by the federal "assault weapon" ban (which expired in 2004) or by a smiliar law in Connecticut. Even if it were, plenty of guns equally lethal against schoolchildren (hundreds of millions, in fact) are widely available. That is hardly surprising, since the "assault weapon" category is arbitrary, based more on scary, military-style looks than features that make guns more deadly in the hands of criminals. Likewise, Lanza reportedly used "high-capacity magazines" (holding more than 10 rounds), but millions of these are already in circulation, and they can be readily fabricated no matter their legal status. (That's leaving aside the question of whether the need to swiitch magazines or weapons makes much of a difference in a murderous assault on defenseless people.) The notion that restrictions like these can have a noticeable impact, let alone that they can "end" or "stop" occasional outbursts of senseless violence, is hard to credit unless you believe what Obama insists he does not: that evil can be legislated out of the world by acts of Congress.

Outlawing high capacity magazines sure is a great idea. It would have allowed the little kids and their unarmed kindergarten teacher an opportunity to jump and subdue the gunman during the extra two or three seconds he would have spent reloading the smaller clips.

You can't legislate away evil.

But if you get rid of gun-free zones, you can kill evil, before it kills so many innocents. 

Robert Bork R.I.P.

Robert Bork passed away today. He was the victim of one of the most viscious and dishonest personal attacks by the Left in modern American history.

He was a brilliant judge and legal scholar and a good and brave man. Our nation would have been blessed to have him serve on the Supreme Court.

He will be missed. He was a devout Catholic-- a convert. He is now with the Lord he loves.

Please pray for him and his family.

Fifty percent of active gay men will become HIV positive

Commentor Hoo and I have been having a little back-and-forth about the lifetime risk of acquiring HIV for active gay men. California has recently passed a law making it a crime for a licensed therapist to suggest to a minor that he shouldn't pursue a gay lifestyle.

:-0

I thought that it was worth considering the risk that not challenging the gay lifestyle poses to the kid.

I pointed out that the lifetime risk that an active gay man will become HIV positive is 50%.

I said:

Male homosexual conduct is perhaps the most dangerous activity known to man. Half of male homosexuals get AIDS.

I should have said "... get HIV", which commonly progresses to AIDS. Hoo didn't even notice my actual (minor) error.

Hoo took greater umbrage:

This is spectacularly wrong on a number of levels. It's not so hard to get the right numbers from the CDC. It's amazing that no one has bothered so far.

Here is what CDC says:

Gays represent approximately 2% of the US population. That would be 0.02×300 million = 6 million. At the end of 2009, an estimated 442 thousand of them had HIV. That would be 7 percent. A considerable number, to be sure, but nowhere near 50 percent. Not even close.

But we are not done yet. Having HIV does not necessarily mean having AIDS. Fewer than half of people with an HIV infection have AIDS. That means that the fraction of gays who have AIDS is around 3 percent. Not 50 percent.

... If you could do math, you would go to the CDC webpage and crunch the numbers yourself. Because you suck at math, I will do this for you.

In 2009, 11,400 gay men acquired HIV. Out of 6 million. That gives a probability of 0.0019 per annum. We may estimate the sexually active lifetime of a gay man to be 30 years. The total probability of getting an HIV infection is thus 30×0.0019 = 0.057, or 5.7 percent. Not 50 percent.

It is not surprising that this number is close to the 3 percent I obtained above. HIV has been around for a while, so the population is close to equilibrium.

So I must fire you as my secretary for trying to perform tasks that are clearly above your pay.

Hoo

So, dutiful conservative fact-checker that I am, I followed the link. I clicked HIV/AIDS at the top of the page, and got the HIV/AIDS main page at the CDC.   Then I clicked "Basic Information" (to the left, second down in the little list), which Liberals apparently don't click because... it provides basic information.

Then I clicked "Men Who Have Sex With Men (MSM)" -- it seemed relevant. Did anyone but me notice that Men Who Have Sex With Men and Mainstream Media have the same acronym? Heh.  

Under "Prevention Challenges", the CDC says:  

Results of HIV testing conducted in 21 cities indicated that 19% of MSM tested in 2008 were HIV-positive

:-0

At the same CDC website from which Hoo scribbled his 5th grade statistics project and concluded "that means that the fraction of gays who have AIDS is around 3 percent. Not 50 percent.", the CDC reports explicitly that 19% of MSMs are HIV positive.

Hoo: '3% of gay men are HIV positive.'
CDC: '19% of gay men are HIV positive'

So Dr. Hoo, scientist, underestimated HIV prevalence by 85%, using "data" from the CDC website that actually gives the prevalence, which is 19%.

:)

It gets better. Dr. Hoo, scientist, doesn't understand the difference between prevalence and incidence. Prevalence is the percent of HIV in a population at any given moment. Incidence is likelihood of getting HIV over an interval of time. The incidence of cancer for an individual over a lifetime is about 33%. The prevalence of cancer in the population at any given moment is much less than that, a few percent, perhaps.

My assertion was an incidence assertion-- that the lifetime likelihood of getting HIV for a gay man is 50%.

So where did I get that number from. Well, here:

"A study based upon statistics from 1986 through 1990 estimated that 20-year-old gay men had a 50 percent chance of becoming HIV positive by age 55"

From here.

Literature reference: 

Donald R. Hoover, et al., “Estimating the 1978-1990 and Future Spread of Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1 in Subgroups of Homosexual Men,” American Journal of Epidemiology, 134(10): 1190-1205, p. 1203 (1991).

Hoo replied to my literature citation:

The work on which this factoid is based is very old: 1991. It is an estimate from the early days of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Mine is new and is based on hard numbers.

You may fuck off now.

Before I fuck off, let me sum up:

The prevalance of HIV positivity among gay men is 19%. The lifetime risk of a gay man getting HIV is 50%.

In California, if I were a therapist, and I told a kid who was my patient the same facts about the risks of male homosexuality that I just told you, I'd be committing a crime.

The gay agenda marches on.